Title: Tending
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: G
Length: 1000ish words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Post-canon, Umi and Clef, pre-relationship.
Summary: Clef's totally built himself a witch's cottage.


oOo

Visiting Clef's cottage in the first hour or so of each visit to Cephiro had become a habit for Umi, over the past few months.

She'd been surprised, when he up and moved out of the Castle - not that he'd gone far, but just that he'd gone at all. He'd not mentioned the plans, she'd just turned up in the summer and when she headed for his study, Ferio had called out 'if you're looking for Clef, he's at his new house today."

For a moment, she'd been struck by a completely horrible feeling. Her whole stomach had turned over - had he moved away so she wouldn't be able to see him anymore? They'd been arguing a lot, lately, about the most nonsensical things, but she hadn't thought he would leave without telling her-

"It's about ten minutes walk from the bailey gate, the Guard on duty can point you in the right direction," Ferio continued, and Umi had swallowed, trying not to let the relief show.

When she walked down the path that the lady on duty at the gate at pointed out, and found the little cottage in the woods, with a low wooden fence about it, timber-framed with white-plaster walls and a chimney… well. She stood at the gate and tried not to giggle. It would have made the perfect witch's cottage in some film.

Today, with autumn starting to turn the leaves on the trees it looked even more so. Not only was there now some vine clinging to the walls down one side, but the whole front garden seemed to be a herb patch, and there was a distinct increase in the number of birds and other creatures hanging out in the trees around the building. She was still snickering as she headed down the path and opened the front door, knocking on it as she stepped in through the warm flickering touch of the wards.

"You're meant to knock first," Clef said, not looking up from the notebook he was writing in. He was sat at a writing desk set against the side wall, by a window flooded with warm afternoon sunlight. A griffin the size of a large dog was curled up on the floor beside the desk, fast asleep on what looked like a set of Clef's robes.

Umi grinned at him. "Hey, at least I remembered to knock."

"I suppose that is an improvement." He glanced up, smiling, to wave her in. "Do you mind making a cup of tea? I want to finish this off."

"Sure." She let the door swing shut and headed on back to the kitchen. He'd shown her how to work the heating-stones set into the counter after the third time she insisted he give her a reading lesson, by now she knew where to find kettle, teapot, and cups - and which tea Clef liked best in the afternoons. The rich, smoky scent from the leaves when she opened the caddy was almost like chocolate.

From here, she could see out into the back garden, which had a vegetable patch by the back door leading on into a miniature orchard, a dozen fruit trees sheltered by the taller trees of the wood. "Total witch's cottage," she told the view, before getting two cups of tea ready and heading back to the front room.

"There's some spiced bread in the pantry, in the round green tin," Clef said, head still down over his notebook. The griffin was so fast asleep it was twitching its claws and making little brr noises, probably dreaming of catching dinner. "You might as well bring it through, there's not much left."

Umi fetched that, too, and set it on the little low table by the sofa. There was a small pile of books there, all thin and with large titles on the covers. A bowl held fruit from the garden. "Clef, why do you grow so much food when the Castle's right there and you still eat there most of the time? Plus you could buy anything you want from the marketplace. Don't you have enough to do, without adding all that gardening work?"

"I like it," Clef said, finally setting his pen down and turning to raise an eyebrow at her. "It's comforting, sometimes, to have a little piece of Cephiro to look after - but just a little bit, and the choices I make here will mostly only affect me. It doesn't take that much tending to, either. Anyway, this way I don't have to bother looking up stock levels before I start fiddling with potion-making, I can just go into the garden and grab the ingredients I need."

"I thought all these romance books you claim to have were to be comforting." Umi waved a hand at the bookshelves, the books much neater now than when she'd first found out that they weren't just stocked with heavy tomes of magical theory. She still didn't quite believe him that a hefty chunk were romances, but he'd agreed to teach her to read Cephiran so she could see for herself.

"They are," Clef retorted, shaking his head. "So is a cup of tea, or a walk in the quiet of the woods, or a warm blanket on a chilly night."

"Those all seem a lot less like work than weeding."

Clef shook his head at her, smiling slightly, and she looked away. Whatever it was about this place, they'd argued less often and less violently since Clef had it. Maybe it was just because he wasn't working all hours anymore, having somewhere outside the castle to go home to, but he was a lot more settled.

So was Umi, when she was here. The place felt… looked after.

Though at the same time, it felt a lot more like they were alone with each other than it ever had at the castle, and she never quite forgot that, a tension at the back of her mind the whole time.

Still, with tea and books to busy themselves with, Clef offering her the choice of what she tried reading this afternoon, there was nowhere she would rather spend her time.